I built my own gaming pc back in Nov 2010 with an i7-970 24g ram. While I have upgraded the GPU twice and upgraded to larger SSD's as prices have come down, I am still using the same machine for gaming. Not that what I am doing is very intense or hardcore intense graphics. I can comfortably play all the Blizzard titles, modern FPS like whatever COD is newest, etc. Maybe not on max settings anymore.

Still, I am impressed by how much I have gotten out of my machine.